


faking sleep to count your breath

by bydayorbynight



Series: would it be okay if I came home to you? [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Identity Reveal, M/M, Michael Guerin's Airstream, Past Alex Manes & Rosa Ortecho Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29190834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bydayorbynight/pseuds/bydayorbynight
Summary: Michael couldn't look at Alex’s face without his heart breaking into a million pieces.“I have to tell you something, Alex.”He couldn’t change the past. But maybe he could give him this. Because he would give him anything, no matter the cost, if it meant he’d be whole again.—After Max tells Liz about aliens, Michael realizes he needs to tell Alex too.
Relationships: Isobel Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: would it be okay if I came home to you? [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135127
Comments: 28
Kudos: 85





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous Tumblr prompt: After Max tells Liz about aliens, Michael decides to tell Alex and does.
> 
> Set in 1x02/1x03

_Yes, Max risked our lives to save Liz. I am mad too. But she was dying right in front him. Come on, Michael. Is there really nobody in this world that you wouldn't risk everything to save?_

_Sad._

Well, Isobel was right about one thing. The whole thing _was_ sad.

Michael had seen someone he loved dying right in front him too—in fact, thousands of times. The difference was, he could never do anything to save him.

The dreams had started almost immediately after Alex had left, intensifying every time he picked up a snippet of news on his whereabouts. Every deployment.

He never knew where Alex actually was, but in his nightmares it was always some variation of a fiery hellscape, dust and debris threatening his eyes shut and filling his lungs. He was always standing in front of Alex, a ghost. There, but not there. And Alex was always before him, dying. A different way every time. And there was nothing he could do but watch.  
  
It got to the point where he couldn't even hide it from Isobel anymore, who offered to try something, anything, to help. Of course, he was vague about what it was he actually dreamt about. Nobody needed to know the gory details. Or about Alex.

“Dream-walking?” Michael spat, incredulous. “That sounds made up.”

“We are _literally_ aliens, Michael. Anyway, the idea just came to me one day. I mean, I can get in people’s minds. Wouldn’t that mean I can get in their dreams too?”

“Don’t come near my head,” he said with a mock tone of menace.

“Okay! I’m only trying to help,” Isobel said. She said that to him a lot these days. The reality was, she was worried Michael was going to die from his alcohol-laden attempts to self-medicate.

But Michael knew there was no cure to what plagued him. Though he got through the days blaming Jesse Manes, blaming Alex, blaming the whole fucking military-industrial complex, the truth always came to light as he lay in the dark. 

He was the reason Alex went to war. He was the reason Alex lost his leg. Yeah, he would have risked everything to save him. But he was also the reason Alex ever needed saving in the first place.

* * *

Seeing Alex in front of him, in person, was always a tiny little miracle. Every time.

But he had gotten so used to seeing the back of him, it took him a beat to realize that for the first time, Alex wasn’t leaving, but leading him into the Airstream.

There was no denying that the sex was great, but what he enjoyed most of all was being able to feel Alex’s body against his and know with certainty that he was real, flesh and blood and human warmth. Alive.

“You stayed.”

“Where did you think I was gonna go?” Alex murmured between kisses.

“I don’t know, home?”

Alex thought about what Maria had said.

“This feels like home.” He kissed him again, slow. “You feel like home.”

Michael smiled. “Is that so?”

“More than anywhere else.” Alex hesitated. “The truth is, Roswell hasn’t felt like home since I left after high school.”

Sadness clouded over Michael’s eyes. “Did I ruin it for you?”

“What, no! I mean, it was a lot of things. But mostly with Rosa dying—I didn’t really know how to process it then. I guess I still don’t.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you guys were so close.” It pained him to just now be coming to this realization.

“Yeah. After she died, I guess I didn’t really talk about her with you. It just felt too real, like I could keep pretending she was away at college or something if I didn’t say anything. I just felt really numb about it, which helped actually. I didn’t have to really feel it for a long time.”

“Alex...”

“I just feel like I failed her, you know? She’d been asking me to hang out, you know, go to the record store or whatever, and I was just too busy with stuff. And yeah, I was a little distracted with...us. She called me that day, and I didn’t answer. You know, maybe if I’d answered, if I’d gone to see her more, she wouldn’t have...”

“It’s not your fault,” Michael’s response was swift and fierce.

“Yeah, I’ve gone to my fair share of therapists. And funerals too, since then, if I’m being honest. But Rosa, I think about her all the time,” Alex said, his voice rough with emotion. “I should have been there.”

Michael couldn't look at Alex’s face without his heart breaking into a million pieces.

“I have to tell you something, Alex.”

He couldn’t change the past. But maybe he could give him this. Because he would give him anything, no matter the cost, if it meant he’d be whole again.

“What?”

“Well, actually it’s easier if I show you.”

There was a sense of urgency to Michael’s voice that compelled Alex to play along through his confusion as they got dressed and drove into the middle of the desert.

“You know I hate horror movies, and you’re literally asking me to step into a dark abandoned mine,” Alex quipped to an unnaturally serious Michael, who had grabbed a flashlight from the back of his truck.

When the three glowing pods came into view, Alex gasped quietly and took a step backwards, turning to Michael.

“What the hell...”

“These are pods that came down in the 1947 crash.”

“Oh my god, you were actually being serious about the historical site thing...”

“Yeah.” 

They walked up closer to the pods, and Alex hovered his hand over the shimmery surface, enraptured in its glow.

“How do you know about this?”

Michael cleared his throat. “How do you think I got here?”

Alex’s head turned instantaneously. “Wait, what? Are you trying to tell me that...that...” He couldn’t speak, it was so ludicrous.

“That I’m an alien?” Michael smirked.

Alex nodded slowly, but deep down the alarm bells were going off. “Why are you telling me this?” 

Michael looked at him with a love he knew Alex wouldn’t understand.

“Because it’s not your fault Rosa died. It’s mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This probably needs a part 2 but I’ve been trying to keep my Tumblr prompts to around ~1k words so let me know if that is something you’d be interested in, dear reader.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn’t leave it on that cliffhanger, of course ❤️

  
“What do you mean, it’s your fault?”

“Rosa was killed by an alien,” Michael said slowly. “She didn’t get high and crash her car. That was just...a coverup.” The words felt like poison coming out of his mouth.

“What? No, no! You wouldn’t do something like that.”

Michael shrugged. “Well, you didn’t know I was an alien either, so maybe you don’t know me that well.” It stung to say it, but he didn’t know how else to convince him.

“I was with you, that whole day, until...” Alex trailed off.

Michael looked at him meaningfully. “Yeah.”

“What are you saying? That you...you took it out on them?”

“No! It was an accident.”

“Your hand was totally messed up, how did you even...”

“I can do a lot with one hand.”

If it had been under any other circumstances, the innuendo wouldn’t have been lost on him.

“Like what?”

Michael sighed and stared at the ground, psychically kicking up a whirlwind of dust and sand and gravel that rose slowly and then scattered lightly back down on the ground.

Alex went slack-jawed, his eyes wide as saucers as he looked at the man he thought he knew.

“You _accidentally_ killed three people with your mind?”

Michael had always been bad at lying. It was a miracle he’d held onto this one for so long.

“I, um...”

“And you’re admitting it to me now because, what, you finally feel guilty enough?” Beneath the shock, Alex was equal parts furious and terrified, not to mention upset at himself for being made the fool. He was at a loss for what to do next. How do you hold an alien accountable for killing your best friend? What if that alien was the boy you fell in love with ten years ago? He thought joining the Air Force would have prepared him for most things he’d encounter in Roswell. He was wrong.

“Alex, I know there’s nothing I can say that will bring Rosa back. You can hate me. God knows I deserve it, and worse. But I just needed you to know the truth. You do deserve that.” It was most of the truth, he reasoned. He drew the line at throwing Isobel under the proverbial bus.

“I-I need to, um—I just need to go.”

Alex turned and left quickly. Michael always left his keys in the ignition, and Alex knew this. The perks of having a long history.

When the dust had settled from Alex’s hasty getaway, Michael exhaled whatever was left of his spirit and took out his phone.

“Hey, Isobel. I, uh, need a favor.”

* * *

“Okay, Michael. ‘Splain,” Isobel said, handing him a bowl of what looked like radioactive soup.

The car ride had been silent, mostly because Isobel thought Michael looked like he might start crying if she said anything. The only thing he had said was that he couldn’t go back home, not yet. The truth was, the last memory of his time in the Airstream was damn near perfect. He wanted to keep it that way for a little longer. Before reality came crashing down.

So now they were in Isobel’s house. Noah was away on business, and Isobel usually used that time to experiment with her cooking.

“What is this?”

Isobel rolled her eyes. “Um, it’s ‘The Stew’? It’s trending! And don’t change the subject.”

Michael groaned. Where to begin. 

“Don’t get mad.”

“Wow, Michael, that’s a very promising start.” She looked worried as she picked through the stew.

“I told someone I’m an alien.”

Isobel froze, eyes wide. “What?! Who?”

Michael’s looked at her warily, vocal cords constricting. “Alex Manes.”

“Alex Manes?! Why?” Isobel paused dramatically as she strained to connect the dots. “Wait...you...and Alex...”

He nodded. “End of senior year. ‘Til now, sort of. It’s been...complicated.”

“First Max, now you? You were the one who was so mad at him in the first place!”

“Yeah, well you were right. If it had been Alex, I would’ve done...whatever it took.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“I also told him what really happened with Rosa.”

Isobel stood up abruptly, slamming her hands on the dining table. “Are you fucking serious, Michael?”

“Rosa was his friend! And he spent ten years thinking that she died because he wasn’t there for her! I couldn’t just let him...”

“Really? You couldn’t? Alex is in the _military_ , Michael. Are you out of your goddamn mind? How do you know he isn’t figuring out a way to bring you in as we speak?”

“Because he...wouldn’t do that,” Michael said weakly, realizing he wasn’t really sure at all.

“You said they were friends. Don’t you think he might want to, I don’t know, bring his friend’s,” she paused uncomfortably, “killer to justice?”

“Maybe,” Michael said simply. It had gotten so out of hand, he was resigned to the consequences.

“I could change his mind.”

“Let’s just wait, okay? Maybe he won’t tell anyone.”

“You really think that?”

Michael didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes made Isobel do a double take.

“Oh my god. You’re that much in love with him.”

He didn’t object.

“I don’t know if that makes you the world’s greatest romantic or the biggest fucking idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did they ever explain how Isobel knew about Michael and Alex? I don’t remember 🤷🏻


	3. Chapter 3

“I don’t get how you’re so rich and only have one bedroom.”

“I have _hobbies_ , Michael. I have a painting room...”

“You don’t paint.”

“...and a gym. His and her offices...”

“Okay, now you’re just bragging.”

“Can you not be weird about this? Just sleep in my bed, it’s a California King.”

Michael looked at her skeptically. “You’ve told me on multiple occasions, against my will, I might add, about the... _activities_ you and Noah have gotten up to in that bed...”

Isobel smirked. “Oh please, Michael. I change the sheets.”

He sighed. It was late, and the day had worn him down to dust. “Fine.”

“Good,” she smiled. “I don’t want to be alone when the FBI or the, like, alien retrieval squad busts through the door.”

He didn’t want to be alone either.

“Just don’t wear that...see-through thing,” he said uncomfortably.

“It’s a _négligée_.” She gave him a sly smile. “I know you sleep naked, Michael. So don’t do that either, and we’re good.”

They both crawled under the covers wearing mutually approved sleepwear.

That night, he didn’t dream of Alex. He dreamed of Rosa. More specifically, her death. It was like he was back there again, in that cave, watching a seventeen-year-old Isobel place her hand over Rosa’s mouth and end her life with startling ease.

A small, shaky voice emerged from the depths of darkness behind him.

“Wait, Michael. Is this a dream? Or a...memory?”

When he turned, a present-day Isobel in pajamas stared back at him in abject horror.

“I think you know the answer to that,” he said, dropping his head defeatedly.

When he awoke, she was next to him, still frozen in shock.

“What the fuck, Isobel!”

“You were having a nightmare.” She said, in distress. “I just wanted to, I don’t know, help?”

“Next time, just wake me up like a normal person,” Michael groaned, exhausted. It was just one more thing in a long line of recent, earth-shattering revelations.

“It was me,” she said slowly.

“It wasn’t. You weren’t yourself! It was someone, or something, else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What difference would it have made?” He asked impatiently.

“Are you seriously asking me that?” Isobel was beside herself. “I’m... _a killer_. And I don’t even have control over it?!”

“It was an isolated incident. Nothing has happened in ten years. And I’ll make sure it never will.”

“That’s very noble of you, Michael, but you can’t make sure of that. What are you going to do, follow me around for the rest of your life and make sure I don’t murder anyone?”

“Let’s just go back to sleep and figure it out tomorrow,” he said. She looked unconvinced but lay back down and turned away from him.

When Michael woke up in the chill of dawn, Isobel was gone.

* * *

After walking for what felt like an eternity, Michael was home. He had thought about calling Max but then thought better of it. He could already hear Max grumbling, “I’m not your Uber,” in his ear.

The truck was parked in front of the Airstream as if nothing had happened. Keys still in the ignition, Alex’s SUV long gone.

The Airstream was how they had left it. He tried to replay the euphoria of that last night in his head before the memories faded into the ether. So much had changed in twenty-four hours, and he didn’t really have anyone to blame but himself.

A knock on the door interrupted his reverie, and Michael opened it without a second thought because his day couldn’t get any worse.

It was Alex. He looked like he hadn’t slept, hair disheveled, circles dark under his eyes.

“Do you want to tell me why Isobel just showed up at my doorstep to confess to a murder that you just confessed to yesterday?”

Michael sighed. How quickly it had all fallen apart.

“Whatever game you’re playing here, I want out,” Alex said angrily.

“I’m sorry,” Michael breathed out.

“For what?”

Michael’s gave him an almost deranged smile as he thought about his reasons for apology. The limit did not exist.

“For starters, that I never told you about what really happened to Rosa. And then lied about it, again.” He inhaled jaggedly. “Isobel’s right. It wasn’t me, but I told her it was. She was totally blacked out. She didn’t even remember anything until last night.”

“Why did you say it was you?”

“I mean, it looked like her, but it wasn’t her, I promise. I was there. I saw it. It was like she was a totally different person. She was already traumatized, I couldn’t tell her what she’d done.”

“Oh my god Michael, you covered up a triple murder.” Alex looked like he couldn’t decide whether to run or keep digging what seemed to be a bottomless pit of things he didn’t know. “She, or whoever it is, could be...dangerous!”

“What was I supposed to do? Go to the police and tell them a possessed alien killed three girls with her hand?”

Alex was quiet for an unsettlingly long time. Finally, he spoke.

“Rosa was demonized for this.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.” Michael looked wretched as he sat down onto the floor of the Airstream and rubbed his face with his hands.

Alex sat down beside him, softening. His fatal flaw had always been this. Sympathy for the devil.

“You didn’t have to tell me any of this. I don’t get it, you would rather I think you’re a-a murderer than, what? Ruminate over what I could have done differently?”

Michael didn’t say anything.

“So this is why you stayed? And didn’t go to college?”

“I stayed for Isobel. To make sure nothing like that would happen again.”

Alex placed a warm, tentative hand over his. “You were punishing yourself.”

Michael huffed out a short, mirthless laugh. “Well, I did cover up the murder of your best friend. And somehow invited all the town racists to come out of the woodwork.”

Alex was quiet. “You were just a kid.”

“So was Rosa. And Kate. And Jasmine,” Michael’s voice broke as he said their names.

Neither of them said anything then. It felt like a vigil, a moment of silence.

“You let her think it was you all those years,” Alex finally said.

“It wasn’t her.”

“It wasn’t you, either.”

Michael quietly rolled the sentiment around in his mind.

“Well, thanks for not calling the Feds on either of us. Unless you’re wearing a wire right now, which I can’t even be mad about, to be honest.”

Alex let out something between a scoff and a laugh, which somehow sounded like the best thing Michael had heard in a while. “I haven’t figured out how to report it without getting myself involuntarily committed.”

Michael turned his head to look into Alex’s eyes. “That’s the reason, huh?”

Alex gazed down at his lap before giving Michael a serious look. “I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would selfishly choose someone over the greater good.”

Michael sighed. “I don’t want you to do that either.”

“Well, I can’t help it.” Alex said, a little desperately.

Michael smiled at him sheepishly. “Guess that makes two of us.”

Alex still couldn’t believe it, staring at Michael. He kept forgetting mid-conversation that he was an alien. Michael was _Michael_. He would always be the guy who made him feel like the world finally had something to offer him. As it turned out, it wasn’t the world at all. He was a gift from the universe.

Alex slowly got to his feet as Michael eyed him cautiously.

“Where are you going?”

“Where do you think?” Alex gave him a smile that Michael thought he’d never recover from. “Let’s go catch a murderer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, most disappointing usage of there-was-only-one-bed, I know.
> 
> Also, it’s a pet peeve of mine that multiple characters on this show say some variation of, “Trust me, I’m not gonna let that happen,” when they are absolutely not capable of backing that up lol /end rant
> 
> Thank you for reading and waiting for me to add a bit more!

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Killer by Phoebe Bridgers


End file.
